09:44 am - The Big OWe have finished with another Tomes for this year and the turnout was fantastic. I suspect everyone right now is coming down with the Post-Production Crash in varying degrees of severity, but when you've been head-first in a project for so long, practically living in your performance space, you are bound to experience withdrawal when it is all over. Even when you're full in the knowledge that what you're doing is ephemeral. Even with recordings preserving the experience, there is only a finite number of performances. This fact is a constant. Hell, it's a mantra.

But it still doesn't prepare you for the sad and empty feeling you get when you're cleaning out the hall and the chairs have been put away and the set dressing, as minimal as it was, has been cleared (and even though it was minimal, you just can't fathom the sight of the bare stage now -- it's not supposed to look like that, dammit) and everybody's making plans for their next project, be it collective or individual.

I've got two big projects next up on the horizon with the PMRP. One is one we've known about for a while, of course: another Red Shift production at Arisia in January 2009. This'll be our fourth time performing at the convention and third with Red and the gang, and it's always fun to be able to bust out the geek refs for an appreciative and receptive crowd.

However, there's a PMRP performance coming up before that. This is the big news I was too tired to write about the other night. Seriously, I was totally exhausted (and the fact that I hadn't known yet whether or not we'd formally accepted at that point doesn't enter into it.) So for those of you who aren't local and haven't heard this shrieked, yelled or otherwise proudly announced by me or any number of us PMRPers, here it is:

We've been invited to perform at Boston's First Night celebrations this year. This in and of itself is a great honor, as the selection process is quite competitive and performance slots hard to come by.

We'll be getting a 90-minute slot on New Year's Eve, from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. Again, this is huge. We don't even know what we're going to do yet, but that's the least of our concerns right now, honestly.

But the kicker? The cherry on top of this tasty treat? We'll be performing at the Orpheum.

Yes, the Boston Orpheum. Not the East Tushtup Orpheum Community Center where we'll be expected to serve decaf to senior citizens afterwards. No, this is the Orpheum. The Or-phreakin'-eum. The 2,700-seat (more or less) theater. I have no delusions of actually filling every seat, but that's not the point. The point is that IT IS THE ORPHEUM FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. With professional sound guys to run our stuff, and an events coordinator who believes in us and thinks we've got a great shot at entertaining an audience.

My god. Way back WHEN, when we put on our first Tomes show and attracted the attention of one local newspaper, I thought we'd "come so far". When we were asked to return to Arisia, I thought we'd "come so far". When we got to WBZ, I thought we'd "come so far". But now I've got to stop thinking that because the distance we've come seems to have just leapt exponentially. It is mind-boggling to me. I can't wait to see what we put on, and I hope you come watch and listen if you're in the area.

I have one question, though. (Well, two, but you said you don't know yet what you're doing for the Orpheum show.) That being, was your favorite part of Tomes really the pneumatic tube messages arriving? From where I was sitting, that seemed to be what kept cracking up the soundboard crowd.

Glad you liked the show! As far as the tube bit goes, it wasn't so much the tube joke itself that got us as it was Renni's business with retrieving each note. Every night (and every intro, it seems) her angry desk flailings got more and more drawn out. She started the dress rehearsals simply fussing, but by Saturday night she'd taken hints from the audience response and furiously ransacked the desk for each note (shaking the note out of the tube proved to take too long so she only did it for the first act to establish the tube's existence, and then just rummaged in the desk drawers for the next two times.)

Add to this the fact that the Sound Board and Light Operator probably had a serious case of the giggles already and the whole thing was probably a lot funnier to us than it should've been.

x minus one counter-productions theatre

Ohhhh, I wish I had seen this before we closed. Hello there, I was the director for this show. Ahhh, it was a blast, and a dream for me to get to do this. It went very well, yesterday we closed the show. Everyone had so much fun, I really hope we can do it again. Please stop by our website and in the next few days we will be putting pictures from the shows up and you can get an idea what the experience was like. And if we do it again you will know!-Brian